Day 12 Important Discovery and Trying to Feel the Emotions

I had a very important discovery during my journaling today. My friend that I have known for 20 years is not who I always thought she was. She has very similar personality traits as my mother who has an extremely narcissistic personality. My Friend is a wonderful caring person but she is somewhat opinionated and bullheaded. She is certainly not narcissistic but has "similar" traits. I have also put her into a substitute mother role for many years and didn't realize it. My husband picked up on how I behave around her and saw the similarities. He just never said anything. Friend is 14 years older than me and I have always had a difficult and strained relationship with my own mother. Friend became more than just my friend.

And what's even more important is that this pain all started when she was planning her retirement and deciding where to move in my state. We would be living within a short drive for the first time since my family moved here 18 years ago. All these years we had a long distance friendship with short occasional visits. My last two visits to her resulted in a migraine and terrible back spasms. And I have discovered that I am afraid of disappointing her and also that she is not as deep as I thought she was. I am a very deep person and I can tell it sometimes makes her uncomfortable when I talk about deep emotions.

So now I have to come to terms with this and I am sad.

 

Your long-distance friend is going to live closer and you are feeling anxious about it. Maybe consider that she also may not like living closer to you. Just see how it goes. And you have been making her a mother figure, but she is her own person. I've made the mistake of projecting qualities on some of my friends that I later realized they didn't have or deserve. If you find that seeing your friend more often is a problem for you, maybe just slow it down to less frequent visits. Very few people in my life care to talk deep. They may just not want to reveal so much about themselves. That can be disappointing to us, but we have to learn to respect their wishes and live with it.

 

She has actually been living here in my state now for two years and we have had many visits. This is how I have come to realize what is really going on. I kept finding myself disappointed when she didn't want to listen to my innermost thoughts. And I got some negative reactions when I was sharing a letter I had written to my mother with her. She does not really understand where I am coming from. I also have felt jealous because she has made a whole bunch of new friends in her new home. But what do I expect? Her to sit around and wait for me to visit?

She is retired and I have 10 more years. She would love for me to move there when I retire but by that time she will be 79 so who knows what will be going on in our lives.

I have been so focused on the future and my retirement that is 10 years away. That happened when I started visiting my friend. Her neighbors are her age and older. They are retired and I am not. So it has been an adjustment from the beginning when she moved here.

I am feeling better today as I come to terms with these very important revelations.